HOW ABOUT A "BAT" STORY??????

MY MISSIONARY BBROTHER, FRED, HAS A NEW "BAT" STORY.....

KALWA FARM REACHING OUT

by Fred M. Allen

I got up around midnight to check on our children who were sleeping on the floor near the entrance. While using my flashlight to make sure the door was locked securely, I started to touch the door knob only to find it occupied by a bat. I shooed the bat away and it returned to its home in the attic. When I returned to the bedroom, I found another bat on the furniture near our bed. It must have been blind as a bat for it didn’t move when I approached it. I removed an empty drawer from the chest and trapped it under the drawer as I laid it on the floor; then we couldn’t go back to sleep because the bat was scratching to get out, so I put him out of his misery so we could return to sleep.

The setting for this very dramatic intro was a large farm house on Kalwa Farm in Zambia, Africa, which had been vacant for 30 years. It was left partially-furnished by the Moffat Family who are descendants of Robert and Mary Moffat, pioneer missionaries in Africa, whose daughter, Mary, married David Livingstone, also a pioneer missionary of world fame. My family and I went with another family to survey Kalwa Farm and the surrounding area in view of the anticipated arrival of a new family from America to live and work there. The 2,800-acre farm had been given to the Baptist Mission of Zambia by the Moffat Family with the stipulation that it be used to spread the Gospel and that the little church on the farm be continued.

Soon Tom and Lucille and their children arrived in Zambia to begin their career on Kalwa Farm. They studied the local language and eventually began what turned out to be 25 years of effective ministry as agriculture missionaries. They restored the large farm house and lived in it all those years. They built another missionary residence and requested another missionary family join them to emphasize evangelism and new church planting. God called several different families to join them there and all of them had effective ministries through the years..

Tom and Lucille established a wonderful ministry which touched thousands of lives. They refurbished the old brick home, built housing for the workers, set up a demonstration farm, opened a room in the large house as a nursing station since Lucille was a nurse, grew crops for the local market, and even created a hydro-electric plant to generate electricity which was a tremendous project. Tom actually built an elevation by the stream which flowed through the farm to provide a waterfall sufficient to operate the hydro motor. It was a sight to behold.

The team of other missionaries who came to plant and develop churches reached out from Kalwa Farm in all directions to share the Gospel. Many new churches were started, a Bible School was established to train the new converts, and more than 100 new churches had been started within a 50-mile radius. Kalwa Farm was reaching out, not only to share the Gospel, but to help meet the needs of the whole person. When Tom and Lucille retired, the farm was turned over to the local Baptist Association who continues the effective ministry.